The Bohemian Girl

Denton stayed to talk about other things, but he knew when he left that he’d made Heseltine’s day worse, not better.

He wanted to talk to somebody about it, but Janet was off with her lawyer; Atkins’s was the wrong ear. What did it mean that Mary Thomason had drawn the doorway of a male rendezvous on her portrait? Did she know something about Erasmus Himple and thus was making a threat? Had she learned something from her brother, who then went off to the Continent with Himple? Did this make Himple the one she feared was going to hurt her?

He went in the Regent Street entrance of the Cafe Royal and then into the Domino Room. He was hoping for Frank Harris, but it was far too early. No Augustus John, either; he would be back in Liverpool by now. He sat, still wearing his hat and overcoat, and drank a milky coffee and tried to think it through. It was the same squirrel cage — round and round, too much suggestion and not enough fact.

A little after six, a disreputable figure shambled across his view of the room.

‘Crosland!’

Crosland was pushing fifty but looked older, untidy grey hair surrounding a pouched and lined face. He wore an enormous unfitted ulster that, like a magician’s cloak, had pockets both inside and out. Papers stuck out of them. His hat had once been a silk topper. His waistcoat, unmatched to anything else he wore, carried old egg yolk down it like candle drippings. Crosland was nominally a hack journalist, really a polemicist and an information peddler; he prided himself on being able to cobble up a fire-breathing pamphlet on both sides of any subject.

‘Got a minute?’

‘Buy me a drink?’

Denton signalled for a waiter. Crosland, never absolutely drunk, was usually on the way; beery breath blasted from him — always a sign that he was on his uppers, his preferred drink brandy — and, under and around it, an odour of wet wool and sour milk.

‘I need some information.’

‘Cost you.’

Denton dropped a shilling on the table. ‘The Mayflower Baths.’

‘Ha! Cost you more than that.’

Denton fished out another shilling.

‘Make it half a crown. Pricey part of town.’ When the other sixpence had gone on the pile, Crosland removed his hat and rubbed his dirty hair with his left hand, then put the hat on the table. A glass of brandy had appeared by then; he sipped. Denton’s own glass was empty; Crosland indicated the money and said, ‘Buy you a drink?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Well, then. The Mayflower Baths. Ah, well. Discreet spot for gents of a certain taste to find young ’uns, if you follow me. Mm? Used to be any evening after seven — very different during the day, ladies’ Turkish bath and so on — but at night, this other drama. Oscar was known to drop in. Had a taste for some of the rougher ones.’ He drank again. ‘Gone now, if you’d been thinking of stopping by.’

‘Gone?’ Denton had a vision of some sort of demolition, London nowadays gobbling up older buildings as if they were chunks of candy.

‘Closed. Coppers raided it. After Oscar’s trial, the Baths put out the word that it had gone out of the man- and-boy business entirely. I was told that as gospel truth. Maybe it was, for a bit. However, they started up again, Tuesday and Saturday evenings. Did regular business other days, other times. Perfectly respectable. But Tuesday and Saturday after seven, if they knew you, the old times were back. Never there myself, but my understanding is it was a bit like Smithfield Market. Very little love lost, if you follow me.’

His glass was empty. Denton ordered another, but Crosland insisted on paying for his own this time. ‘Sure you won’t have something yourself? Always like to be hospitable. Failing of mine. Anyway. The police raided it last summer, probably to make an example. Some very well-placed people got snagged in the net. It never made the papers, except for “Closing of Mayfair Landmark” sort of pieces, kind of thing would let would-be patrons know that the cat was out of the bag. I wrote something m’self, “Memories of the Mayflower Baths”, that was as innocent as a maiden’s dream but capitalized on the moment — editors looking for stuff that would titillate. A dozen boys went up on charges, couple of minor gents — public indecency, that sort of thing, nothing huge — and the point was made. Owner doing time for endangering public morals. It’s going to reopen, I’m told, as a therapeutic spa for ladies. New name, of course.’

‘You know the names of the people arrested?’

‘Arrested, yes. Detained, no. The tale is the coppers swept up about thirty people but let most of them go at the door of the magistrates’ court. Some rather soiled drawers that night, they say. Names we’d recognize if we heard them.’

‘Himple? Crum?’

Crosland shook his head. ‘Himple the artist? Always rumours about him. You know anything I can use?’

Denton shook his head. ‘When exactly was the raid?’

Crosland raised a finger. He began to spread the coat’s big pockets with both hands, peering down into the messes of papers; at last, he drew out a small black notebook. He leafed through it. The pages looked like damp leather, thick and soft with use. ‘August the seventh.’

‘That was the day of the raid?’

‘Night. Coppers went in the door at nine-forty-five, August the seventh.’

Denton put out another shilling. ‘Worth every penny.’

A day before Mary Thomason had written her letter. Two days before Erasmus Himple had left for the Continent.

When he got home, there was a note from Janet Striker: ‘I am going away for a little. Ruth Castle will know how to reach me.’ He flushed and swore, then saw himself, a large man about to have an infantile tantrum. She has the right to do what she wants. It was difficult to tell himself that and mean it, yet he had to: sometimes when he looked at her, he saw a look of something like absence, and he knew she was away in one of the dark places to which he would never be admitted. He had them, too, those sinks into which the inevitable sorrows of being alive were poured and, for the most part, covered over. But it hurt that she had gone to get away from him, for that was what he was sure she had done. And damn Ruth Castle, of whom he was thoroughly sick and whom he didn’t want to see. Not now, anyway. Maybe it was not having a book to write, something to concentrate on. Maybe in a few days. Maybe Janet would come back quickly. Maybe-

He crushed the paper in his fist.

‘Do you speak French?’

Heseltine’s reactions were a semiquaver slow, as if he were thinking about something else. ‘A bit.’

‘I want to go to France for a few days. I need a translator.’

Again, the delayed response, and then a flicker of what might have been suspicion, some recollection perhaps of the discussion of the Mayflower Baths: what was Denton proposing? Heseltine’s cheekbones got some colour. Denton said, ‘It’s about the girl who sent me the note. You said you wanted to try to help her.’

‘In France?’

‘Her brother.’ He told him quickly about Erasmus Himple.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t either. Something happened in Normandy. They were supposed to stay the summer, but after a month they packed up and went to the South of France. Then Himple fired him. Something started in Normandy, I think. Maybe a lovers’ quarrel.’ He kept his eyes on Heseltine’s. The younger man’s cheeks got bright spots high on the cheekbones. ‘It might do you good to get away. Get a new perspective on things.’

‘I wouldn’t dare take Jenks.’

‘Neither of us needs to take anybody. We can be there in a day, back in another couple. It isn’t as if we’d be staying at the Ritz.’

‘My French is terribly rusty.’

‘Rust is better than no metal at all. I’d just get the spike and shout at them.’

Denton insisted that they could start the next day; he didn’t say that the post-partum depression of having finished the book now gripped him. Heseltine at first demurred, then became almost manic, swinging from torpor to excitement. Now he was sure he could be ready in an hour. They could take the night boat. Anything was possible.

Denton bought two tickets on the morning train and the Le Havre boat. Atkins made a face when he told him